Sometimes, it feels like the only thing we have left to feel is anger.It might not be the emotion we actually are struggling with, but it often times feels as if it's the only one that feels productive or safe to allow out.What do we do, when all we have left is the anger?

Melissa:Her feet, tiny yet forceful, pummel the back of my seat. I grip the steering wheel, my nose burning with that familiar pain, and my eyes blinded by the tears brimming in their corners. I look into the rearview mirror to see her tiny hands pounding on her closed window. In that mirror, I see her writhing, and see him walking away in his uniform and desert boots. He has already told us goodbye. But his guilt is eating him. He stops, turns his gaze back toward the truck, and hesitates. I plow out of the parking lot, making that decision for him. He can’t come back for one last goodbye. Our hearts have already exploded.The radio hums with a lively kids’ tune, and my three-year-old son tries desperately to cheer her up. When he feels helpless, the clown in him protects him. He slaps his face, looking at her for a giggle. She gives him nothing. Her cries, agonizing and explosive, fill the new emptiness of the seat next to me. With no other way left to help, my son finally resorts to asking. “Why are you sad?” he says to her. “Because I miss Daddy,” she responds. “I know. Me too,” he softly replies, staring out his window.My tears fall beneath my dark sunglasses. I remain mute in the front seat, trying not to dictate her pain or to interfere in their discussion. “Only when they need and want me,” I tell myself over and over again. I want to stop the truck. To hold her and tell her it is okay. But it isn’t. None of this is okay. The goodbyes. The pain. And the ever-present, uncontrollable anger. None of it is remotely okay. And I won’t lie to her. Or make her think her pain isn’t allowed. She cries. And cries. He laughs. And stares. I drive. And seethe.Why would he choose this lifestyle? Why does he always leave? When will this finally be over? Why do I always feel guilty for being angry with him?Thirty minutes pass, and she has finally quieted. “Mommy,” she whispers. “Yeah, honey?” I ask, worried she may hear a hint of anger in my voice. I need her to know I am not angry with her. Or really with my husband. I’m just racked with rage that knows no target.“If I’m mad at Daddy, does that make me a bad girl?” Silence. How much more can these poor babies handle? How much more can I handle? How much more can he handle? All of us?“No, baby. Of course it doesn’t. You just miss him, and that is perfectly fine,” I answer. “Anger is natural. I get angry sometimes, too,” I answer. “Yeah. Me too,” my son chimes in, still staring out his window. “It doesn’t make me feel good inside,” she responds. “I know. But, if you talk about it, sometimes that makes it better,” I answer. She doesn’t respond. They both ride in silence, and I join them.I understand. Who wants to be angry with the “hero”?

Chris:

Anger. It is so powerful in our lifestyle and we have nowhere to focus it. We tend to take it out on our husbands, but that isn’t really fair because if they had a choice, they would pick us. We can’t take it out on our kids; it isn’t their fault. They are dealing with so much and they don’t understand all the pieces that got us to the point of sending their Daddies off to war away from them and away from us. We try and blame the government or the Army, but how do we let them know how mad we are besides voting?

Our spouses think they know what we are dealing with on this side of the wars, but there is no way for them to get it. We don’t want to blame them but how can we not because they are the ones that leave and leave again? They joined and in essence we joined too. We choose to be married, and I know we don’t get to pick who we fall in love with, but all the anger is still there. It is in our soldiers. It is eating at us and it is overwhelming to our kids.

All we can do is to keep fighting to not let the anger run us. We need to allow ourselves to feel the emotion without it taking over every moment. Melissa was right in allowing her daughter to express herself. She has no other way to get the hurt out than to kick the seat and cry. Heck I still want to do that sometimes myself. We need to talk to them about what they are feeling and let them know that it is OK. It doesn’t make them bad and their Daddies will still love them. They are too young to understand the situation so there is no way we can expect them to behave in any other way.

What we can do is help them through it. We can hold them while they cry that they miss their Papas. We can get pillows for them to hit and scream at. We can have them write down or draw their feelings and we can get them counseling if they need it. They and we have a right to our anger and hurt. The key is to not feed into each other’s and to allow our families the right to their feelings even if it is hard.

The one thing I miss more than anything about being a military spouse is the friendships.Some of them, I know I will have for life.Some of them only lasted the length of one deployment.Each of them, I valued for what they were and are.There is nothing else like them.

Melissa:My heart bent today. Shattered. And splintered. It had nothing to do with my husband. Nothing to do with a deployment, separation, training or school. But, it had everything to do with the Army.I consider myself congruent with this lifestyle. I love to move. Travel. And I rarely get attached to any place, home, or person. I enjoy new views. Different homes. Redecorating and rearranging our lives. Each new home, each new back door provides a reason to reinvent myself. It gives me a chance to continue to see myself in new ways. To improve past mistakes. To search for forgiveness. To find a reason to cling to my family.But today, I would trade it all for a chance to hold on to a friend. I didn’t know her long. In fact, I only spoke with her about four times. But the genius of this lifestyle, the part I claim to love and adore, is that you need only a moment to see your pain, your love, your family, your heart, reflected in the eyes of another military wife.She knew my pain. My separation. My fears of motherhood, and my worries that I will never be good enough. Never a good enough wife, mother, or person. And she recognized in me the need to see it in another’s heart. She had just finished a deployment. As we all have finished or face one. And she knew my pain without ever having explained it. She was me. And I her.And I told her goodbye today. Even though everything in my body wanted to revolt against it. I wanted more. A chance to form a bond that couldn’t be severed. A chance to watch our children play. To see our families grow, change, and remain cemented in each other’s hearts.Today, I still love this lifestyle, even though watching her leave hurt more deeply than I could have imagined. Simply because I can’t imagine never knowing the need to grasp friendships so quickly. Strongly. And vividly. To each military wife out there, I salute you. Need you. Feel your arms and hearts. And I love you. There are none stronger. Nor more bonded.

Chris:

As military spouses we are thrown into unexpected relationships all the time. We are faced with people that in the lives that we had before we would have never even come across, and we are better for it. We make friends easily and we leave them easily. Or they leave us. Sometimes we have a few years with one another and sometimes just a few brief moments and we cherish both. Each time we are faced with a new deployment or a new PCS, we bargain. We ask for a nice home, a good unit, for our husbands not to deploy. At least for a while. We also ask for good friends and no drama.We get what we get, and the fact of the matter is we all always offer up anything for a little easier time. For something that will relieve the stress. We would trade a nice duty station for a neighbor that becomes our life line. We would trade our whole lives for our soldiers to be able to watch their children grow in person. Bargaining allows us to try and have some control over the uncontrollable. We try to be perfect, we try to offer up behavior and bad habits, and maybe, just maybe it will be enough and we will catch a break. We want some control and sometimes we get it, but most of the time we just make it work.As I am getting ready for another PCS I find myself wishing I could bring my neighborhood. I would offer up almost anything for these ladies. We have been through two deployments together. We play Bunco once a month and sometimes go out for margarita Wednesdays. We don’t talk about the hardships. We don’t console each other. We just get through it knowing that we are not alone. We take out each other’s trash cans if we see that someone forgot. We watch pets for each other when our husbands come home on EML. We yell at each other’s kids, and we steal whatever husband is around to help us with something that is just a boy job. Because we can. Our spouses do not really even know one another very well but they do know that we are surrounded by people that will take care of anything that needs to be done. And that puts their minds at ease a little. We might not ask for the help but we know that it is there when or if we need it. Military wives are special. They may be as different as night and day, but to be in our club you just need to be married to a soldier. That is more than enough hazing. So, know whatever you bargained for, you will make it through with whatever you get.

What is is about your spouse that drives you up the wall, yet when it's missing, becomes the thing that leaves you undone?

Melissa:

Since I have known my husband, his shoes, flip flops, sandals, hiking boots, or even his houses shoes have been under my feet. Tripping me.

“Could you please pick up your boots?” I asked nicely in the beginning. Always attempting to sound like the calm, gentle, newly-minted bride. He complied. Sometimes grumbling. Sometimes apologetic. When pleasantries failed, I turned toward the power of suggestion. “You know, it would be much easier for you if all your shoes were in the same spot,” I hinted. “They are in the same spot. They are here next to the door where I need them,” he answered. But no matter how often I asked or begged, his shoes still remained under my feet. A constant point of contention.Seven years of marriage, I still walk through the door, groceries in hand, children in tow, and stumble, yet again, over the desert boots he now wears for his job. “Is it so freaking hard to pick up you stinking boots?” I yell through the house. “What am I? Your mother?” I bellow, wanting to kick them across the room. He walks toward me, grumbling, and picks up the boots. “Sorry,” he says. Again. “Yeah, I know,” I mumble in return. I have tried everything I can imagine to break the habit. I have picked them up myself. Hid them. Buried them under his covers on his side of the bed. I have taken the laces from them. Filled them with a dirty diaper. Nothing has worked. We are now locked in battle of wills. I never imagined that something that once sent me into a rage could now bring me so much comfort. We have spent years apart now with deployments, schools, and training. The one constant in our lives is separation. But, those boots, the same ones that trip me, baffle me, and haunt me, bring me a sense of comfort. Our marriage is tied up in those battered laces.Long after the smell of his cologne leaves the house, long after the dent in his side of the bed has disappeared, long after his dirty towels are washed and his voice has faded in the distance, his boots still linger next to the door.I trip over them, falling through the door while I unload groceries. Herd children. Check the mail. Their awkward weight lingers under my feet, and I catch myself wanting to yell at him. I long to hear his grumbling answer. He hasn’t been here for months. And my heart feels empty.I bend over, pick them up, place them back in their watchful position, and leave them to wait for him. I will stumble over them again. Will want to kick them across the room. But, until his feet return to fill them, I am content to see, feel, and stumble over the memories of our life together.

Chris:

Denial is easy. We default to it when we do not want to believe something. You get a positive pregnancy test and you go take another because that first one could be wrong. You find out that a friend from high school married your ex-boyfriend and you insist that it is a joke. When our spouses are getting ready to deploy we notice all the things that annoy us about them. We hide behind these little annoying things. We bury the real issue, the fact that we are going to miss them while they are gone. We are going to worry. We will be lying awake at night, wondering if they are going outside the wire or if the threat will come to their FOB (forward operating base). We hide. We hide the fear, the anger, and our feelings.This is normal. It is how we cope. It gives our brains time to come to terms with the stress and the change. It gives us time to find a way to survive the battles that are in our near future. So we fight our soldiers over the little things. We nit pick their every wrong move and we hide from the real bombs a little longer. This is normal. This is survival.When our soldiers head out, we find rituals to help us get though those times when we miss them. We leave boots by the door. We say goodnight to them out loud when we go to bed at night. We wear their t-shirts. We leave a toothbrush in the bathroom for them. We find ways to prove to ourselves that they will be coming back, that they belong in this home with us.

One of the things that Melissa and Chris worked to create with Her War, Her Voice, was the conversations between us all.They wrote blog after blog of what we've come to refer to as "She Said/She Said" (as well as every variation we've been able to create a conversation around).This is one of their earlier conversations.

Melissa:On rare occasions, between the anger of constant separations, the crying of children missing their father, and the overwhelmed sigh of me, the person seemingly stuck in this quagmire, I see glimmers of my “happily-ever-after” marriage. Almost like subliminal images instilled in an old silent film.I imagine watching myself from a chair in an abandoned film house. I see myself on the celluloid screen. See the faint smile and the miming motion of swirling life. I see my arms wrap around my children and see their willing arms wrap around my neck. Our words pop onto the screen. “I love you, honey,” is written in white on a black screen with delicate fancy framework.We are happy. Functioning. Living. Moving and breathing.But it isn’t until he enters from stage left that our world begins to expand. The black and white images burst with explosive Technicolor. Our words, no longer mimed in silence, inject themselves onto our tongues. Our explosive reactions thunder from the surrounding speakers. “Daddy!” my children scream. “Hi, babies!” he answers. Our children, in their new neon-colored clothes run to his open arms. Their laughter, loud and boisterous, echoes throughout the theater.We fall in with him, walking toward a glowing sunset and feeling the warmth of the day. Our shoulders, no longer drooping, push back and our hands, no longer searching, encircle and graze over his. The credits begin to roll as we stand, stoic and proud, basking in the colorful glow of happiness.When they are sleeping soundly and happily in their beds, I turn to him. When all is quiet, I release stories of our life without him. I tell him about our growing children, about our lives apart from him. He responds, telling jokes and filling the air between us. I laugh. So hard and full that I begin to realize how empty I feel when he isn’t next to me.A tear fills my eyes, and he leans in, his hands cupping my face. “You okay?” he asks. I sigh. Feeling the heat radiating from his hand. “Yeah,” I say. “I just realized that I don’t laugh when you are gone. Well, I mean….I do. I enjoy myself. But, I don’t laugh until I’m dizzy unless you are next to me.” The tear that haunted him falls from my eye. He wipes it clean, leans into my ear, and whispers, “Then we will just learn to exist between the laughs.” I can’t imagine any other way.

Chris:

Depression can be expressed in many different degrees. It can be as unnoticeable as a smile never quite reaching your eyes or as severe as not wanting to get out of bed and attempted suicide. If these symptoms do get severe please talk to a professional. They can help and we all need some help sometimes; even the strong military wife.When our soldiers leave it is as if they take with them all our joy and happiness. It walks out the door with them. What is left is a shell of ourselves that is doing everything that we are supposed to but with a hint of sadness behind the eyes and sometimes more then just a hint. We need to find ways to get past the sadness, the loss, and live between the laughter.First, we need to come to terms with the fact that it is OK to live while they are gone. We tend to put our lives on hold and not want to do anything that they might want to do with us. They miss out on a lot of stuff: births, birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. It is OK to enjoy these things while they are gone. We can’t possible enjoy them as much as when our soldiers are here, but we have to give ourselves permission to be happy when we can and not to feel guilty about having a little joy. Our soldiers try and grasp onto some happiness when they can. It might be in the form of an extra piece of pie in the chow hall, a cigar outside with some buddies, practical jokes, or a poker game. They allow themselves to smile in the midst of war. We are allowed to smile in the midst of war. It is alright to forget our agony for a minute or two. It is OK to want to laugh.

Mental health is a shaky, scary topic.Talking about the meds we use to help regulate our mental health can be even scarier.

One of my favorite memes reads:If you can't make your own neurotransmitters, store bought is fine.

And they are. Sometimes, we need the extra help. Because we can't make what we need ourselves.And that's okay.This blog was written by Val and Colleen.

Colleen:I had been taking Zoloft for almost 2 years. I was tired of being an emotional slave to a pill. I was tired of having to remember it every night-- or else I would withdrawal symptoms that made life unbearable. I was tired of the emotionless zombie that I was: no extremely happy, no horribly sad-- just there. I was tired of remembering to refill the prescription every 60 days. I was tired of all of it. I wanted out. It didn’t matter that my heart would still race. It didn’t matter that driving in the rain incited blinding panic. It didn’t matter that despite a hysterectomy, I still experienced PMDD. It didn’t matter. I just wanted to be done with the stupid pills. I marched myself into the doctor’s office and announced that I was prepared to come off the Zoloft. He argued with me, but I eventually won. I started the weaning process. It took about a month.At first, I felt great! I felt free! I was super happy! My calendar began to fill. I stopped sleeping. I felt rages. The rages grew hotter. Heavier. Fiercer. Scarier. The sadness crept in. It flooded my entire soul. Hopelessness. Worthlessness. Self-absorbed self-loathing. I was consumed. I was either incredibly happy and energetic or extremely sad and exhausted. Then the tantrum came. It came with a fury. I don’t remember it. I was blind. I was deaf. Everything was big and loud but silent. After the tornado of fury passed, I realized that I had to get help. I had to go back on the pills. Stupid pills.

Val:Every year I track along a similar cycle. October comes and I feel myself slipping. It’s darker outside and it’s darker in me. I am sadder, I am slower. I am fighting to find “ok” by noon every day. It’s harder to get out of bed. The day feels insurmountable. By November I’m concerned. Around December I start to revel in it, and then I start to come out of it.This year though, This year it was darker and it was deeper. And on top of that, the things happening in my life were darker and deeper. Concerns about my kids. About my husband. Another deployment looming--the third in 3 years. I was exhausted. My reserves were gone. The cyclical slipping felt like it would make me fall into an abyss.I was already doing counseling. I was already increasing exercise. I was doing all the things you are “supposed to do” and still I was slipping. I wanted to avoid the pills. I’ve been on them before. They helped until they didn’t. And there were side effects and worries about side effects. And the feeling that the pill was in control and not me. But still I was slilpping. And I was doing all I could to avoid the pills. To get better without them and it wasn’t working. It just wasn’t working.So I went to the doctor. I told him all of this. He handed me a prescription.I went home and stared down the bottle. Would I take them?

Stupid pills. ColleenI took the stupid pills. It is not easy. Everyday I think about how I need a stupid pill to make it through the day. My brain announces my weakness and tells me how I’m codependent on pills. I try to remind myself that it is okay. It is like a blood pressure pill. I have to take it. I have to function.At first I couldn’t tell if they were working. Each day, I’d feel the sadness lighten just a little bit. Days went from gray to light. Blank stares changed into a determined focus. Body aches and fatigue morphed into exercise and deliberate movement. Hopelessness became hope. I am starting to live again.I don’t like the laundry list of side effects, but I realize there is a cost-benefit. I’m active in my home. I’m part of my kids’ lives. I cook food. I go on outings. Those dark scary thoughts are a distant past. So I’ll take the side-effects. I’ll take the pills.Stupid pills. Val:I took the pills. I honestly might not have except that my friend, Colleen, said it was ok to flip off the bottle and stomp off when I took them. I don’t know if they are working. The side-effects aren’t terrible. That’s a plus. Am I getting better? This time it hasn’t been like a light switch flipping on.But I feel steadier. I don’t erupt in anger as quickly. It takes a little less time to get my game face on for a given day. They might be working. Maybe.And at least I know I am throwing everything I can at this to feel better and to function better. Stupid pills.